Sakura Systems OTA Cable Kit

I made up some of the knotted OTA digital cables (80"/40") described by dekay on 11--14--01. These were superior to straight runs of equal-length OTA on digital. The only way I have been able to improve this design is to add an MFSC ferrite ring clamp of 415/645 Ohm impedance (inner diameter of 5mm) to the two cable leads near the output end. The resultant HF damping in the MHz region accelerated the rise time of the signals and improved the dynamics. I will experiment a little more with ferrite rings next week.
I should probably report, given my "overkill" atttitude towards Stratos power cables, that the filaments of one of my VAIC 520B power tubes are now burned out. I do not think that the Stratos power cables I was using shortly before this happened contributed to the burn-out of the tube, since I had been overheating it for about six months to compensate for microphonics. Just a word of warning: Stratos cables in at least two applications (phono and power) have had a way of pointing up certain faults or weakness in my system that either I was aware of (but ignoring) or I was not at all aware of.
Bwhite, let your OTA cables break in for at least 120 hours (better 200 hours) before you judge them. I too noticed "something missing" when I replaced the Statements with OTA, and the "missing piece" was probably what you refer to as (NBS house) "colorations." I prefer to run these two cables apart from one another, rather than mix them. Like dekay says, I would probably keep the extra Stratos wire and connectors. In my case, I needed extra connectors to keep up with the experiments I wanted to conduct with OTA. I used up 100 meters of Stratos wire in 6 weeks.

has the furor over the OTA cables died?

Thanks "B" and Slawney for the updates. If I can swing another kit after "things" settle on the homefront I will consider hooking up satelite speakers in our bedroom (which would be much less expensive than using a separate system), thus the "long run" query. Slawney, glad to hear that Richard's "loops" and 1:2 ratio worked out in your setup as well. Richard is definately "out there" in a good way. LOL.

Styx: "Furor" hardly describes this product's following, with but a handful of online users/owners sharing notes. What was it that you actually meant to say? Please spit it out in a pattern that I can understand.

As previously mentioned, I have been experimenting with ferrite rings and cylinders on OTA this week. Apparatus and procedure: the full range of MFSC rings from MEC were acquired, and attached to different points in the cable infrastructure. Observations: a little extra speed, and resolution when attached to digital cables. A little less noise when attached to power cables and DC hook-ups. A little extra sparkle and purity when attached to all cables downstream from a filter-less DAC (without alias filtering) perhaps due to dampening of high-frequency modulation (which can have a damaging effect on some power amps and speakers/crossovers). Upon installing these ferrite rings there was an immediately rewarding combination of air and presence, of crisper and even less blurred transients, and increased detail, clarity, and definition. In many ways, I found this positive result surprising, given the failure of shielding to improve Stratos cables. However, since I have not tried out all combinations, I am still not so sure that some connections are not reacting adversely to this type of dampening treatment.